 Don’t put all your legs in one basket: Theory and evidence on coopetition in road cyclingJulian Matthes and David Piazolo European Economic Review, 2024, vol. 170, issue C Abstract: We study competition between two groups of individuals with team affiliations, where each group solves a coopetition problem to outperform the other group. Our analysis suggests the presence of a strategic benefit of diversification that goes beyond merely reducing outcome uncertainty. We outline applications in industrial and workplace organization and provide a detailed model of road cycling races, which naturally feature this strategic setup. We find that asymmetric groups tend to cooperate better. Also, having team members in two competing groups is beneficial for a team, as it increases free-riding opportunities in both groups. By analyzing data from over 40 seasons of professional road cycling races, we find empirical evidence in favor of these results. In particular, having a teammate in a group behind positively impacts win probability. Keywords: Coopetition; Free-riding; Diversification; Coordination; Sports economics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0014292124002216 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104892 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.